December 16, 2012

"California inspired — and now inspired by — other states' marijuana legalization measures"

The title of this post is the headline of this new article in the San Jose Mercury News. Here is how it gets started:

Many marijuana activists always thought California would be the first state to legalize the drug for recreational use, but their dreams faded in 2010 when the state's voters rejected Proposition 19.

Yet the legalization measure's poor timing, lackluster funding and vague regulatory plan offered vital lessons that allowed activists in Colorado and Washington state to succeed last month where California had failed. Now activists in the Golden State are, in turn, scrutinizing those states' successful campaigns to prepare themselves for another California measure down the road.

"This isn't over until we say it's over, and we won't say it's over until we win," said Dale Sky Jones, chairwoman of the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform.

Jones, executive chancellor of Oakland's Oaksterdam University (a cannabis industry training school) said California's next effort is already under way. Proposition 19's backers hosted a summit meeting Dec. 7 at Oaksterdam with the people behind five other legalization measures that failed to make it onto the ballot in the past two years. The groups agreed to work together to avoid competing measures.

"The coalition in California is now stronger than ever and bigger than ever and moving forward," Jones said, adding that activists will probably put their full effort behind a measure on 2016's presidential election ballot, though it hasn't ruled out 2014.